Orphalese Tarot Zone Community Forum

Hi Richard and everyone!

I have been using the program and cant imagine how I got along without it in the past!

I use the Motherpeace deck and it has meanings for left tilt, right tilt as well as the traditional upright and reversed. I wasnt sure if there is a way to rotate the cards once they have been dealt to lean either to the left or the right. I know how to move the cards on screen but I havent been able to rotate them.

I have no idea what it would take to program this or if it's even possible to do so.

Blessings
Golden Hoops

At this moment in time, this is not a possibility in the program, it only supports not-inverted/inverted cards. To my knowledge, there's only four or five totally rounded decks (I know well, been involved with 75 percent of them). A possible solution is doing a extended version of the deck, containing all the cards tilted as you mentioned. If a card dealt appears again, just discard it. Motherpeace, you said? I can set this special deck in a snap if you're interested, just let me know. Best.

Thanks Dominatrix! I only know of one other deck that was round- the Daughters of the Moon deck by Fiona Morgan. I have several square decks too- but the round ones give more flexibility it seems, life is rarely either all up or all down but usually somewhere in between. The didital decks here with totally untraditional shapes are interesting too. I think the shape affects how we read the cards in a way. I'd very much appreciate the extended version if u are sure it wouldn't be too much.

Blessings to you- have a beautiful day
Golden Hoops

Well, let's see... There's several round decks around apart from the two you mentioned. If I'm not wrong, there's the Tarot of the Cloisters (I gave transparency to this one by request), kind of a tea leaf oracle (I don't remember the name and it's not present now at my HD, but I also tweaked this one for someone) and my own Fantasy Mandala Tarot. I also re-vamped the Motherpeace by request of Auset: as you can see, and except for the deck you mentioned, all of them have passed the trial-by-fire of my PhotoShop CS2! I can say then I have a degree in round decks, and I'm afraid also I'm the only one here toying around with the concept of non-rectangular decks. They're difficult to design and create, and most of the times, results are so-so...

Anyway, I did the tweak I promised to the Motherpeace, even it's far from being my fave deck. It is available at the File Exchange now, and since it's a special job, you (and all our comrades here) can download it from my Rapidshare service for free: http://rapidshare.com/files/24331833/Mo ... ition_.zip

Be warned: the complete deck is 19Mb long!! Why? Read the About once you have installed the deck. Basically, I've added two more decks to the original one, each tilted right or left, for a total of 234 cards! When dealing cards, user must discard any repeated card appearing: the first one dealt is the good one, tilted or not. The reversal percentage is set to 10, change it in Options as you wish: the possible combinations of upwards, donwards and both-sides tilted can be googlish and maddening!

I can't say I'm very happy with the result, because the automation processes asked for a lot of what if and result is far from perfect. The solution found is a brute-force one and not very elegant, but due to the low number of round decks published, I don't think it's a good idea trying to implement it on OT: if so, our beloved Richard can end his days at Arkham Asylum chasing imaginary angles, and we don't want that, right?

Test the deck and share your impressions. Best.

Wow wee! Thanks a lot- I just downloaded the tilted PNG version and that's exactly what I was looking for. Now, it's gonna mean more work for me, as I put in the tilted meanings. I will look up the tarot of the cloisters and I already have enjoyed the Fantasy Mandala. Usually, technology eventually catches up with ideas (never ever thought in a million yrs that I would be using a computerized tarot deck!). It may be a bit much now, but one day it will be easier to make different shaped decks, I'm certain of it. For now, I totally appreciate this tilted version and over time, I will do what I can in PSE 4 card by card and will share the deck with u. I havent had time to do the deck sharing- but when I get a chance to learn it, I will put it there too. Thanks again, it's good to know I'm not the only round deck fan and that you actually create round decks also.

Many Blessings & Smiles
Golden Hoops

This question about being able to rotate cards comes up with great regularity, so I have no doubt it would make a very popular feature. One major obstacle to developing this feature has always been that the program tried to be compatible with Windows 98, an operating system that does not support transparent or semi-transparent windows (the only way to do this would be to have a form which is actually much bigger than the visible part of the card, but which would be transparent except for the card image which rotates within it). I still don't have any firm plans to start work on this, but it has certainly taken a step closer now that we have jettisoned Win 98.

I have a suggestion for when you do get round to this rotation of the cards, which links it together with a couple of other things within the program.

It struck me that Rotating Cards, like Reversed Cards would be very useful, both for some Decks and for some Spreads (including the very popular Celtic Spread!) But like with Reversed Cards it might make it more difficult to interact with the image of the Card so as to do a good interpretation and reading.

If this were linked up with a tweaked 'Zoom' Facility then it could solve all those problems and possibly make the 'Zoom' facility much more used.

My suggestion is to make it possible for the 'Zoom' Facility to be always on and then just automatically show the card which is selected. If it was possible to 'Dock' it to any edge that would be ideal, and it could loose its title bar and control icons.

Then within this Dockable, Always on, Zoom Window, you could display the card currently selected, but always in its upright orientation. Now that would be really neat and very useful. If you did all the work to reverse the cards, I don't think this would be that much extra work and would be a very good showcase for the feature!

This would also help with any of those Spreads where there are more than two cards stacked up the screen, since the size of the cards has to go down so much. This would include a lot of popular Spreads!

Regards Greg the Yeti

Hi Greg, Everyone,

I think that is a good idea and I started to play around with it a bit last night. I was thinking it would also be good if the user had zoomed in on a detail, that the same detail was magnified when they switched to viewing a different card. A lot of decks I have seen have a repeating layout, so each one has a certain alchemical symbol in the top right corner or whatever. Combining the zoom with the behaviour that Greg is suggesting would make it easy to switch from one card to another and examine that particular symbol on each one.

Regarding the other suggestions about upright and reversed notes, I don't think it would be too much trouble to have a deck-level option to include both sets of notes in the pop-ups in all cases where that option is set, or a program-level option to include both sets of notes in the pop-ups in all cases where there are zero reversals. Does anyone else have an opinion why one of these alternatives might be better than the other?

Richard

Hi Richard,

Reading your reply made me think of an obvious alternative to my idea of 'Docking' the tweaked 'Zoom Box'. I don't know why I didn't think of it before!

It could be made to slot next to the 'Card Notes Pop Up'.

The only problems with this that I can see are:-
1 That it might not be user sizable, but that shouldn't be too much of a problem given the existing size of the Card Notes Pop Up. For a Celtic Spread with Four cards stacked up the screen it would turn out about double the size. For five cards stacked it would be an even greater magnification.
2 The Card Notes Pop Up cannot be touched. If you try to it disappears! So it wouldn't work with your Zooming idea? The user can't interact with it.
3 For a card near the centre of the screen Left/Right, it might be difficult to squeeze in enough horizontal space. Perhaps spliting the Pop Up on either side of the selected card? But that might make things too complicated?

Some problems, but I thought it was worth mentioning 2c what u think.

Regards Greg the Yeti

Hi Greg, Everyone,

I just uploaded the first beta of 8.3 which includes the zoom idea. You can show the zoom form, and then see the detail on whichever card interests you by selecting it. If you magnify a particular area in the usual way and then see the same area of the next card magnified and so on. Press F7 to restore the normal magnification. Normal magnification is also restored when you resize the form.

It is not dockable, but the program will remember the size and position of the form, so once you have it where you want it you won't have to move or size it again.

Cheers,
Richard